Ukraine and Russia trade more attacks overnight, with the Kharkiv regional governor reporting 10 dead civilians not far from the Russian border and the Moscow mayor saying Ukraine launched some 620 drones toward the region.

This follows one of the largest Ukrainian attacks on Russia during the war over the weekend, and the UN warning that amplified Russian strikes on towns and cities in July meant that civilian deaths in the conflict rose to levels not seen since May 2022 and the earliest months of combat.

The drone attacks on the Moscow area again caused minor damage at a facility belonging to Russian online retail giant Wildberries, a frequent target for Ukrainian forces of late.

The Kharkiv missile strike

The governor of the Kharkiv oblast, Oleh Syniehubov, on Tuesday said that the 10 people were killed and 18 more wounded in a Russian missile strike on the village of Pechenihy.

“The strike damaged 10 private houses, a cafe, a post office, a shop and at least seven cars,” Syniehubov wrote on Telegram, noting that the casualty figures were preliminary.

He said emergency services were responding and dealing with the attack.

Parts of the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine are occupied by Russian forces. Both Kharkiv and the Belgorod region across the border in Russia have been targeted frequently throughout the war.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack targeted a busy intersection.

Hundreds of drones approached Moscow

Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Tuesday that some 620 drones had flown towards the capital region overnight. He said that most were intercepted on approach, and another 180 were shot down over the Moscow area.

Russian state news agency TASS called it the heaviest such attack in two years. Russia’s Defence Ministry said that, in total, it repelled 791 Ukrainian drones overnight across Russian territory and the annexed Crimean Peninsula. The figures cannot be verified but indicate the intensity of Ukrainian strikes into Russian territory in recent days.

Moscow’s regional governor, Andrei Vorobyov, issued more details on the damage caused by the drones shot down over the capital, giving a slightly lower figure of ‘over 150’.

He said that three people were injured in three separate districts, including a young girl with a shrapnel wound to the hand.

Vorobyov also reported damage to several mainly residential buildings, including one house that ‘burned down completely in the village of Kuznetsy’.

He said that a drone also struck a ‘Wildberries warehouse near Atlant-Park’ in the city of Kolomna, which also logged damage at a retail site near a shopping centre.

Use of UK drones

Russia’s Embassy in London also turned its attention to drone attacks this week, responding critically on Monday evening to reports in newspaper The Times saying that drones supplied by the UK had been used in attacks on Russian territory.

The embassy asserted that such reports ‘confirm that London is deliberately opting for an escalation of the Ukraine crisis, while hypocritically professing a desire for peace’.

It accused the UK of ‘acting as an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis’, and said that ‘London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer’.

German minister’s visit to Kyiv

Also on Tuesday, German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider travelled to Kyiv.

The Social Democrat (SPD) politician planned to spend several days in the country this week if circumstances allow.

“The goal of the trip is to work with our Ukrainian partners to identify, at an early stage, opportunities for a climate-friendly, resilient renewal of infrastructure and further reconstruction, including with the participation of the German business community,” the Environment Ministry said on Tuesday as Schneider was arriving.

The minister was accompanied by business representatives, not least from companies specialising in climate-friendly technologies.

Schneider also planned to be briefed on the situation for Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, including the damage to protective dome covering the Chernobyl or Chornobyl reactor that melted down in the 1980s during the Soviet era.

“Its repair is highly complex,” the ministry said.

Ukraine’s main functioning nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia, meanwhile, has been under Russian military occupation and operational control since the first weeks of the war in 2022. Its reactors are in cold shutdown status but the plant still requires external power, cooling and maintenance. Close to the front lines, the plant and the surrounding area have fairly frequently come under fire.

DW